Re: Cleaning House

On  4 May, Henri Sivonen wrote:

> Focusing on authors wanting to convey things is a common fallacy in  
> semantic markup advocacy.

  Correct - but it isn't a fallacy. The entire point behind generic
  coding and semantic markup is /communication/ - which is why suddenly
  changing the agreed-upon interpretation of <I> is as useful as
  changing the meaning of word in mid conversation.

  Unless, of course, we are supposed to agree that semantic markup has
  no value in the real world because a number of browser- and
  editor-authors haven't got a clue and never did.

  Very well. The fact remain: despite the good, and logical, intentions
  of specification authors, the browsers, editors, and authors have
  broken the web.

  <sarcasm>
  
  So lets simplify things. Tables, frames, and font for layout has
  proven itself to WORK - for various narrow-minded definition of "work"
  - and so we should not only keep them, but encourage them.

  This piddling around the pond discussing which parts of "reality" to
  support, and which to throw out because they "lack use cases", is
  simply making things worse.

  Either decide to make HTML a proper, semantic, markup language, or
  stuff it to the gills with whatever presentational hacks authors,
  browsers, and editors wish. Hell, bring back marquee. Why should that
  poor tag be singled out? The fact remain: authors WANT IT and UAs
  support it.

  </sarcasm>
  
-- 
 -       Tina Holmboe                           Greytower Technologies
       tina@greytower.net                      http://www.greytower.net
        +46 708 557 905

Received on Friday, 4 May 2007 15:35:55 UTC